Saturday, November 3, 2007

Responding to Pear's post (just below)

Hi Pear - I'm at the point today, too. Being a very visual person, I decided to get creative, and make my plot a little more real.

I have a bunch of families in my story (about 3 right now) as well as assorted loose characters. So I did some selective (and highly creative) culling of my kids' Halloween candy and came up with this:

Lollipops of different colours were Family 1 members;
Chocolate bars of different kinds, Family 2 members;
Loose candy of different types, Family 3 peeps;
And assorted characters became... assorted candy bits. ;)

I stuck PostIts with each character's name on the appropriate candy, and "played out" my plot on the dining room table (to my children's hysterical laughter) and you know what? I have a MUCH better idea of where everything fits in, and how everything needs to go from now on (I wisely wrote it down as I went along).

Naturally, "where it all fits in" became my mouth, in the case of certain unfortunate characters who were "marked for death"... teehee!

(well, it's supposed to be a fun exercise, isn't it?) :)

PS What is going on with the NaNo site? Is anyone else unable to get on at all? It's been a sad, forum-less afternoon and evening for me.

2 comments:

Amy said...

What a wonderful, visual way of working out your plot lines!! I spent some time a few days ago creating a basic walk-through of where I think my story is going, but I didn't do anything quite so kinetic as animating the Halloween candy. I might have to try that if I get blocked again.

Thanks for the idea!

Nurse K said...

I did the cardinal sin today---completely re-did all of chapter 4 and just cut and deleted all of chapter 5 and started to start over and didn't like how the started-over version was going so I said F it.

If I don't like it, the exercise is not satisfying for me. MUST. EDIT. CRAPPY. WRITING.